Corsets, Ho!
Somebody get me a diving bell!
So, if you’ve been paying attention to pop culture lately, you may have noticed the rise of steampunk from a quiet little genre with a cult following into a mainstream obsession. If you’re not familiar with it, imagine the worlds of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells made real: ingenious and amazing steam-driven devices combined with to-the-nines Victorian-era fashion. If you’re a gamer, think the much-anticipated Bioshock Infinite. A dystopian city floating above the earth in 1912? SO steampunk.
Despite the fact that steampunk is now so mainstream that Robert Rodriguez’s fall 2010 collection was purportedly inspired by it (love him), I only just started to explore the genre. A couple of books, a few hours of Bioshock, and some websurfing later, and here I am. The fruits of my labor will follow in a minute, but I find I have a question. Why is it that steampunk always seems to require goggles? Take a quick look through steampunk pictures and illustrations, and you’ll see a slew of goggles worn, hung rakishly around the neck, pushed up onto the forehead, or sometimes (extra style points), strapped around a top hat, in case of black tie emergency. Of course, I get that if you’re looking for old-school chic, every girl wants to be Amelia Earhart, and if you’re circumnavigating the globe in some sort of amazing steam machine, you might need vision protection. I’m also willing to believe that late Victorian London was darned sooty. I do get the impression, though, that anyone moving in steampunk circles without goggles had better have a bustle/spats and a damn fine blunderbuss.
To be fair, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, my first pass at steampunk, involves an actual, honest to God reason that goggles (and masks) are required that has nothing to do with those daring young men and their flying machines. Priest’s version of 1880s Seattle is decidedly not one in which people have the luxury of worrying about making a fashion statement. Now, I don’t normally seek out either post-apocalyptic fiction or zombies (outside of movies, at least), but I really enjoyed Boneshaker despite the fact that it has a little of both. Despite the fact that the quarantined city of Seattle is nothing short of horrifying, Priest manages to keep things from getting too dark. The people living in this city are tough, gritty, and occasionally verging on monstrous, but they’re also sometimes surprisingly warm and helpful. Life here may not be easy, but it’s clear that it’s still worthwhile, and humanity’s best qualities still shine through. Well worth the read.
My other recent foray into the world of steampunk was The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, which reminded my mother of Charles Dickens and me more of Neil Stephenson. I imagine if you read much fantasy or sci-fi you will have noticed that certain authors make you work harder to piece together their imaginary worlds than others. (Gene Wolfe, for instance, made me work so hard for it on one beautifully written trilogy that I arrived at the end of the last book still not 100% sure exactly what was supposed to have happened. I have been trying to induce sci-fi reading friends to read it and figure it out for me ever since, but “it was really good but you have to explain it to me!” doesn’t seem to be much of an inducement.) Stephen Hunt made me work a little harder to figure things out than I really like, and it might have led me to put the book down if I hadn’t been on vacation and reading a borrowed book.
That said, though, once I’d put in the work, I did enjoy the book more than enough to finish all 600 pages. It’s dense and complicated, but rewarding if you make it past the first eighty pages. I’ll be interested in reading the sequels now that I know what a “steamo loa” is and the entrance barrier won’t be so high.
All in all? I don’t know that I’ll be buying myself a pair of goggles any time soon (although if anyone has a steamer trunk that folds out into an old-school robot, I have a sculptor who will buy it), but I’m definitely going to be keeping my eye out for more steampunk reads all the same. If anyone has recommendations, bring them on! I’d love to hear them.
Special thanks to the National Entertainment Collectibles Association for the fine Bioshock 2 figures!
[...] Links: Today’s linky goodness is as follows: Glass of Fancy blog discovers steampunk – and likes Boneshaker well enough to put it in a little arrangement with Bioshock figures, [...]